Everyone talks about jogging or running as the best exercise for cardiological training of the body, including the heart. Trouble with this is, there is no secure place for me to jog, or even walk. (Besides, I have never, ever enjoyed running.) When I had a secure venue, I used 'heavy hands' walking to get a good workout. Can't do it here, so I spent a lot of money on a nice motorized, computerized treadmill, and that is a partial solution. I say partial because to me, there is hardly anything more mind-deadening than a treadmill. Vary the grade and speed, OK, but it still does not have the “feel” of running outdoors, cross country.

I used to be really into weight lifting, and decided to delve into my files on that subject. I know that I used to achieve high heart rates just lifting weights. So why not exercise my heart and whole body that way? My gym is still there. It’s more fun than the mindless treadmill. I found a file on the Tabata procedure. Named after a Japanese man, the basic procedure consists of a 4-minute routine. That’s what I said, 4 minutes.

You pick a whole body exercise. Since I want to use free weights, I chose the dead-lift, clean and overhead press. All in one continuous motion. It works the legs including the ham strings and glutes, the back, shoulders and arms. The bar is at the standard height above the floor that an Olympic bar fitted with standard plates has. You stand behind the bar, and keeping your back straight, eyes dead ahead (not looking down) you squat to grab the bar and stand up with it.

As soon as you are erect with the bar in hand, you “clean” it up to the height of your collar bones, then continuing the motion you press it fully extended overhead. Lock out, a pause, then the bar is lowered in reverse order, placed on the floor. Stand up, and that completes one repetition. Keep good form, and don’t throw the bar around.

The Tabata procedure calls for you to do as many of these moves (repetitions) as you can in 20 seconds. That’s one set;

Then a pause for 10 seconds (no cheating!);

Then do seven (7) more 20-second sets, with the 10 second interval. A grand total of just 4 minutes and you are done.

And I mean done. This old guy thought he’d better not try to set any records the first time, besides I didn’t know what to expect. So I used an empty bar – no added weight. A bare Olympic bar weighs 20 kg (44 lb). My ordinary run-of-the mill gym bar weighs 17 lb empty. Doesn’t sound like much. But by the time you do 8 sets of 4 reps each, you’ve moved the bar from floor level to overhead 32 times, and accomplished 3,200 ft-lbs of work. That’s equivalent to lifting a ton of cement 19 inches. I was breathing hard 3-4 minutes later, and worked up a light sweat. That was the first day. I thought, “this is easy.”

It’s been awhile since I’d experienced DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). After about 12 hours I felt some soreness in my glutes and hamstrings. It was worse the next morning. I thought I’d better take a day off...

This morning the soreness was still there, but it had reduced to manageable levels. I did another workout, no change in the weight, but this time I was able to do 5 reps in 20 seconds instead of 4. A 25% increase, and this workout required 4,000 ft-lbs. of work. Tomorrow I will add about a half pound to the bar, using big steel washers.

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